Smart Alec

Alec Guinness’s centenary, celebrated at Film Forum.

The centenary of Alec Guinness’s birth fell, without fanfare, on April 2nd. He would not have lamented the lack of trumpets. His life had begun with a blank, the space for his father’s name left unfilled on his birth certificate, and, to judge by the titles of his memoir and journals (“Blessings in Disguise,” “My Name Escapes Me”), he never lost his taste for a vanishing act. Alone among the great performers, he resolved a paradox: how to be a star without being the center of attention—or, at least, while giving no sign that you crave such a prominent spot. When Laurence Olivier played King Lear onstage, in 1946, it was Guinness, pattering around him as the Fool, with a mime-white face, and with his lines shorn to a bald minimum, who stuck in the mind’s eye. They also shine who only stand and serve.

Nonetheless, as though by accident, Guinness grew into a hero—or, rather, into one of life’s supporting players who had heroism thrust upon him, whether he liked it or not. He oozed or scampered through one Ealing comedy after another, making “The Lavender Hill Mob” and “The Man in the White Suit” in a single year, 1951, and British moviegoers, canvassed for their favorites, kept putting Guinness on the list. Cool at times, even remote, he gave them something to warm to. Shifting shape, he remained unmistakable; who knew that chameleons possessed so robust a soul? Where Peter Sellers—who worshipped Guinness, and scrutinized him avidly when they worked on “The Ladykillers” (1955)—would spend himself in a fury of impersonation, Guinness gave no hint of a hollow core. He found a still point in the turning world.

Late but loyal, Film Forum is running a Guinness series, from June 13 to July 3. Most of the obvious candidates are there, including “Kind Hearts and Coronets,” of which nobody could tire, and the six movies that he made with David Lean. (So fair and fresh does he seem as Herbert Pocket, in Lean’s “Great Expectations,” from 1946, that it’s hard to remember that Guinness was already over thirty, and that he had commanded a Royal Navy landing craft in the invasion of Sicily. He was tougher and more seasoned than he looked.) Embedded in the retrospective are semiprecious gems: “The Mudlark” (1950), in which Guinness, relishing the role of Disraeli, holds the House of Commons in his practiced palm, and “The Scapegoat” (1959), adapted by Gore Vidal from a Daphne du Maurier story. Guinness fails to mention the film in his memoir, but Vidal, in his own memoir, “Palimpsest,” recalls it all too well, not least Guinness’s attitude toward the author: “Alec, a very literary man, was not only patiently tactful but treated her with all the skill of a slightly edgy psychiatrist soothing a potential werewolf at dusk.”

Certainly, few actors have been more expert at the smoothing of feathers, or had more of a knack for the mot juste. Invited to comment on a seedy German night club, in the miniseries “Smiley’s People,” Guinness replies, “It was very artistic,” with the faintest of pauses before the final word. Gather all the trades and talents that he displayed onscreen, and you end up with the most curious of amalgams: prince, priest, bank clerk, shrink, dictator, Jedi, vacuum-cleaner salesman, thinker, sailor, soldier, spy. Much was revealed in the serious games that Alec Guinness played. More remains unknown. ♦